Cover of Real World Haskell

Real World Haskell

by Bryan O'Sullivan, John Goerzen, Don Stewart · first published 2008

250mentions
122recommended by
208HN commenters
2008–2026first – last mentioned

58% recommend31% neutral11% critical

Why HN recommends it

Practical introduction to Haskell built around real tasks like parsing, database access, system programming and web services; suits newcomers who want applied examples after a first tutorial.

Summarised by Claude from recommending comments

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Mentions per year

300 2007: 0 mentions2008: 3 mentions2009: 19 mentions2010: 30 mentions2011: 29 mentions2012: 17 mentions2013: 29 mentions2014: 27 mentions2015: 16 mentions2016: 10 mentions2017: 8 mentions2018: 10 mentions2019: 4 mentions2020: 4 mentions2021: 5 mentions2022: 3 mentions2023: 4 mentions2024: 5 mentions2025: 3 mentions2026: 3 mentions200720172026

What Hacker News says

  • tumult · Mar 9, 2011 · Recommends

    …out to newbies as learning material.) The overabundance of bad monad articles is making it harder for Haskell newbies to learn. There are many good, free resources for learning about Haskell, such as Real World Haskell. This is not one of them. Think of a monad as a spacesuite full of nuclear waste in the ocean next to a container of apples. now, you can't put oranges in the space suite or the nucelar waste falls in…

    on “Translation from Haskell to JavaScript (Introduction to monads) ” ↗
  • Red_Tarsius · Mar 25, 2015 · Recommends

    …into all things Haskell. I thought it could be interesting to HN as well. You can read more here: http://goo.gl/SNLxjo If you want get into functional programming, Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!, Real World Haskell and Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell are available online for free: http://goo.gl/4RoYrJ EDIT – Here's a handy cheat sheet of features: http://cheatsheet.codeslower.com/CheatSheet.pdf

    on “Kronos Haskell” ↗
  • Chlorus · Aug 27, 2015 · Recommends

    Have you checked out Real World Haskell by Bryan Sullivan? It's different than most Haskell resources I've found in that it introduces you to monads & IO fairly quickly, so you're not trapped with toy math problems. That was an issue I had…

    on “OCamlers' critiques of Haskell” ↗
  • GeneralMaximus · Jun 8, 2011 · Recommends

    …research on a topic or when I feel I only need surface knowledge of the topic at hand. Sometimes I will buy a book because it was cited on Wikipedia. Does the OP know about the books people publish online? Real World Haskell, Dive Into Python, The Architecture of Open Source Applications, Clever Algorithms to mention a few CS-related books. Then there are a bunch of books on analog and digital electronics, math and statistics,…

    on “Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?” ↗
  • SkyMarshal · Sep 22, 2011 · Recommends

    If you learn something like haskell from books instead of blogs, the explanations are usually much much more comprehensive and cogent. Both Learn You a Haskell and Real World Haskell are excellent in that respect. I find more and more that blogs are great for discussing things you already have deep knowledge of, or of finding leads to resources for learning them (book recommendations,…

    on “Tricky Programming Concepts Aren’t” ↗
  • michaelochurch · May 26, 2013 · Recommends

    …powerful machine, it's not fast. All this said, Haskell is still a very cool language and I think everyone who wants to be a serious computer scientist needs to get some exposure to what it has to offer. Real World Haskell is a great book, for starters. I also think Scala is great if you have strong developers who won't be tempted to OOP things up.

    on “Language Design Deal Breakers” ↗
  • psibi · Dec 28, 2013 · Recommends

    Real World Haskell This book has completely changed my view on programming. Also now I appreciate the whole functional paradigm concepts.

    on “Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2013?” ↗
  • caconym_ · Dec 26, 2016 · Recommends

    …beginner" phase lasts way longer than it might in e.g. Python. For beginners who do want to learn about the core concepts of the language, I found that there was plenty of material to help me on my journey: Real World Haskell, LYAH, the IRC channel, and the internet full of blog posts, to name just a few. I don't mean for this comment to cause offense, or to belittle anyone. I'm certainly not an expert Haskell programmer,…

    on “Reflecting on Haskell in 2016” ↗
  • voidhorse · May 22, 2017 · Recommends

    …has helped me a bit in this regard, such as Functional Programming: Practice and Theory and An Introduction to Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus As far as books on Haskell go, I've found Real World Haskell to be the best--though it does cover a few topics too quickly in my opinion--it may almost be better as a second introduction to the language than a first. Haskell Programming from First Principles is…

  • JackMorgan · May 7, 2024 · Recommends

    …something other than the typical chain of command. - The Classroom Management Book by Harry Wong. This book taught me so much about how humans work. I still apply lessons from this book 20 years later. - Real World Haskell by O'Sullivan, Goerzen, Stewart. This taught me a lot about Haskell, and got me into all the neat effects needed to make a function pure but still handle IO/async, etc. - Peopleware by DeMarco, Lister.…

    on “Ask HN: What nonfiction books do you keep rereading?” ↗
  • pnathan · Oct 18, 2011 · Recommends

    …I've coded for over a decade, and I've never encountered such a difficult to use language and jargony community & documentation (including AWK & SED). The only reasons I have been able to do anything are Real World Haskell, Learn You A Haskell, and Stack Overflow. I'm not going to say Haskell is useless, or has no libraries, etc. Those aren't true. It's also not a bad language because it's weirder than my Blub (Common…

    on “Why Not Haskell?” ↗
  • danieldk · Jun 30, 2010 · Recommends

    I'd say: just try it. After reading haskell-cafe for a day, I felt utterly incapable of ever learning Haskell. I started picking up the language using Real World Haskell (quite an acceptable book). I can read most programs now and crafted some short programs. I still find predicting memory/time use under a lazy-evaluation regime difficult. But it is certainly a nice experience…

    on “Haskell features I'd like to see in other languages” ↗
  • jmillikin · Mar 10, 2011 · Recommends

    Real World Haskell: < http://book.realworldhaskell.org/ > Written by three of the most prolific and capable Haskell library developers. It covers everything from introductory functional concepts to high-performance C-style stateful programming. You can buy a dead tree, or read it online for free.

    on “The Haskell Platform 2011.2 is out: GHC 7 for all ” ↗
  • marshray · Apr 14, 2013 · Recommends

    I know that the IO type and monads live at different levels of abstraction. I am interested in the stuff that you were saying about automata theory. But I'm not as smart or have as much time and energy as that lady from Taiwan who implemented the Perl 6 in Haskell parser combinators. In order for me to use Haskell, I need to be able to get fluent enough with it that I can be productive munging da

    on “What I Wish I Knew When Learning Haskell” ↗
  • polymatter · Mar 7, 2014 · Recommends

    To expand on this, Haskell is excellent to make your own parser. Take special note of say Chapter 16 Parsec of Real World Haskell[1]. This is the sort of application where you would choose Haskell over Perl/Python/Ruby. Of course parsing is something thats very important if you are making your own DSL. And this is another application where Haskell really shines. This is why the guys who do progra

    on “A brief introduction to Haskell, and why it matters” ↗

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